3/29/2017 TheFutureofWork:WeHaveBeenHereBefore

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Aug 12, 2015 6 min read

The Future of Work: We Have Been

HereBefore

(Photo: The Technocrats Magazine)

This is not the rst time society has fretted over the impact of ever-
smarter machines on jobs and work and not the rst time we have
overreacted. In the Depression-beset 1930s, labor Jeremiahs warned
that robots would decimate American factory jobs. Three decades
later, mid-1960s prognosticators oered a hopeful silver lining to an
otherwise apocalyptic assessment of automations dark cloud: the
displacement of work and workers would usher in a new leisure
society.

Reality stubbornly ignored 1930s and 1960s expectations. The robots

of extravagant imagination never arrived. There was ample job
turbulence but as Keynes forecast in 1930, machines created more jobs
than they destroyed. Boosted by a World War, unemployment dropped
from a high of 25 percent in 1933 to under two percent in 1944. And
the hoped-for 1960s leisure society never arrived because the diusion
of information technologies created unprecedented demand for
Druckers knowledge workers, and fueled the arrival of the service
economy.

Now the specter of job-killing robots is back. A coincidence of factors

from a jittery post-crash global economy to dot.com disruption and

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the relentless advance of Moores Law has a new generation of

prognosticators pitching dark warnings and the prospect of radical
change. Jobs will evaporate and work will cease to be what gives us
income and meaning. Material goods will become abundant to the
point of costlessness, and nations will pay citizens a guaranteed
minimum income.

Paul Sao teaches forecasting at Stanford University and chairs the Future Studies and Forecasting track at
Singularity University.

Even in the face of todays considerable uncertainty, it is a safe bet

that the most extravagant claims are no more likely now than they
were in 1965 or 1933. We are headed toward neither apocalypse nor
nirvana. Uncertainty will abound, but change will be far less radical
than predicted, and events will unfold slowly enough for society to
adapt, albeit painfully at moments.

We will muddle through in the undramatic middle. But amid the

muddling, short-term responses will do much to shape long-term
outcomes. With this in mind, what follows is a reality check of some

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of the issues being debated at the intersection of technology and

work.

We need a new vocabulary: We have shrunk room-sized computers to

the size of dust motes and sent robotic spacecraft past Pluto, but we
still use UNIVAC-era vocabulary when talking about new work
challenges. Consider that hapless 1940s neologism, automation.
Coined by a retired Ford executive to describe the narrow
phenomenon of automatic machines deployed on automotive
assembly lines (auto + mation get it?), automation has become
a meaningless catch-all for a much larger revolution. We desperately
need a new and richer vocabulary, or at least need to choose among
existing terms with greater care. Cybermation anyone?

Lets not abandon Keynes just yet: In 1930, Keynes observed that
technological unemployment was a self-solving problem. On balance
new technologies create more jobs than they destroy. Todays job-
shedding turbulence looks no dierent from what scared the bejesus
out of observers in the 1930s and 60s. For example, in 1965 the
federal government reported that automation was wiping out 35,000
jobs per week, yet, just a few years later, it was clear that new jobs
more than oset the losses. Of course, now as then, the new jobs will
arrive more slowly than the old jobs are destroyed, and require ever-
higher skill levels. We would be wise to worry less about extreme
scenarios and focus on managing the transition.

Follow the new scarcities to the new jobs: Every new abundance
creates a new scarcity that in turn leads to new economic activity. The
proliferation of computers made information abundant, creating the
demand for Druckers knowledge workers. And the material
abundance made possible by machine-enabled productivity gains in
turn contributed to the rise of an economy hungry for service
workers. This moment is no dierent; immediate job losses are highly
visible, while entirely new job categories run beneath the radar. Jobs
will be ever less secure, but work isnt disappearing.

Guaranteed Minimum Income dont hold your breath: Guaranteed

Minimum Income paying individuals whether or not they work is
a fascinating concept. But outside its limited use as a small-scale
experimental alternative to welfare or development funds, history
suggests it is unlikely in the extreme. The technocrats espoused a

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similar idea in the 1930s, and in the mid-60s, a group self-identied

as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (cybernation,
atomic weaponry, and human rights) proposed that the government
provide every individual and every family with an adequate income
as a matter of right. What we got instead was Reaganomics and,
eventually, the One Percent. Particularly in the United States, with its
myth of the work ethic and its aversion to moral hazard, Guaranteed
Minimum Income will be as hard a sell as Leninism.

Watch for the jobs that are never created: The drama of jobs lost is
irresistible, be it elevator operators in the 1950s, telephone operators
in the 60s, longshoremen in the 70s, or truck drivers facing robot
competition today. But if the wild card of a jobless future arrives, it
will be because of jobs never created to begin with. Consider
Facebook: when it went public in 2012, it reported annual gross
revenues of $3.7 billion ($1 billion net), accounted for 12 percent of
Internet trac (more than Google), was adding 1.5 million users per
day and had barely 2,400 employees. The same pattern can be seen
across cyberspace, from Airbnb to Twitter and Uber. The global
population is growing merely keeping the jobs that already exist
isnt going to put everyone to work.

Velocity matters: Without a doubt, the world of work is in for

profound change over the next several decades. Work wont disappear,
but its nature will likely change beyond all recognition, just as it has
over the last 70 years. The open question is whether this will be a
wrenching shift or something less turbulent. The problem with
predictions is that would-be seers tend to condense the time
dimension, arguing that vast change will happen overnight. I do not
doubt the scale of change ahead, but I am certain that it will happen
no more rapidly than the changes in work over the last century. We
will marvel at the shifts, but they will happen at a rate that is
manageable if we are wise.

In short, plenty will change in the world of work over the next few
decades, but apocalypse is unlikely. Instead, the pattern will be a
familiar extension of what already has unfolded in the last century.
Jobs will be less secure, an ever greater portion of the workforce will
be unwilling independent contractors, and the notion of pursuing a
single career will seem as quaint as receiving a gold watch upon
retirement. This provides little comfort to workers facing under-

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employment or worse, but it means that managing the transitions

ahead is well within the capabilities of institutions, governments, and
societies as a whole. Provided that we nd the collective will to do so.

. . .

For the Future of Work, a special project from the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, business and
labor leaders, social scientists, technology visionaries, activists, and
journalists weigh in on the most consequential changes in the workplace,
and what anxieties and possibilities they might produce.

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